The Quest for the Holy: The Religious Perspective of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
by © Paul Moffett
A Thesis submitted
to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy Department of English
Memorial University of Newfoundland
May 2017 St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador
ii Abstract
This thesis explores the religious content and context of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. There has long been a heated critical debate about Malory’s interest in religion, and this thesis demonstrates that Le Morte Darthur engages frequently and seriously with religion in general and with a specific manifestation of religion in particular: that is, fifteenth-century lay chivalric Christianity.
This thesis is divided into an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction provides a historical and critical context for the discussion that follows. The first chapter explains the text’s engagement with fifteenth-century lay chivalric
Christianity in particular, and demonstrates that Le Morte Darthur gets more religious as it proceeds. Chapter 2 explores the role of holiness in the character development of Lancelot and Galahad, and argues that the father and son represent two alternative models of holiness. The third chapter demonstrates the thematic importance of penance
throughout Le Morte Darthur, with particular attention paid to Guinevere, Lancelot, Arthur, and Gawain. The fourth chapter focuses on the Grail Quest, and demonstrates that Malory chose to use a symbolic and religious source for his retelling of the Grail story, despite having other options. Chapter 5 uses sections of Le Morte Darthur with no known source to argue that Malory’s religious preoccupation is his own, and not inadvertently imported from his sources. The conclusion makes a case for the significance of the study.
“The Quest for the Holy: The Religious Perspective of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le
Morte Darthur” offers a critical analysis of one of late medieval literature’s central text,
addressing deeply concerns that have more frequently been merely alluded to. More
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broadly, it joins critical discussions about conflicting loyalties, individualism and
collectivism, ideology, politics, theology, and political theology.
iv Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the financial support of Memorial University of Newfoundland’s School of Graduate Studies, and Department of English Language and Literature, and to acknowledge Memorial University’s Queen Elizabeth II Library for access to the books I needed and also for reference librarians who helped me track down specific and esoteric details when necessary.
Thank you to Stephen Atkinson for sending me a copy of an unpublished conference talk, “’in tho dayes’: Trauma, Malory’s Readers, and the Case of Gawain’s Grief.”
I would like to thank all those at Memorial University who functioned formally or informally as advisers on this thesis. Jeremy Citrome’s advice on the writing process I have followed throughout. John Geck’s advice, especially on matters of broadening and explaining the context, was invaluable, as were his suggestions of revisions. I especially thank Bill Schipper for his guidance and advice from the very beginning stages through to the completed thesis. He read drafts that in retrospect were very rough, and offered
encouragement and the most constructive of criticisms throughout.
Thanks also to my family, especially my sister Jill whose pep-talks never failed to encourage me, my father for practical help and support, and my mother for introducing me to King Arthur in the first place.
Above all, I express my appreciation to my wife Jan, who has been unfailingly supportive and encouraging throughout this long PhD journey. Her help was practical:
she was usually both the first and the last to read every chapter, and was a longsuffering a
sounding board for incomplete thoughts and ideas. Her editorial eye is everywhere in this
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thesis, and without her encouragement and support I would never have even begun. Even
more importantly, she gave me enormous emotional support through frustrations and
triumphs, late nights and early mornings. To her, and to our daughters Guinevere and
Maggie, this thesis is dedicated.
vi Table of Contents
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
List Abbreviations xi
List of Figures xii
List of Tables xiii
Introduction – Malory and Religion in Context 1
I.1 Critical Perspectives on Le Morte Darthur 1
I.1.1 A Tale of Two Editors: Caxton and Vinaver 7
I.1.2 Recent Critics on Malory’s Religion 10
I.2 Background Check: The Religious Context of Le
Morte Darthur 14
I.2.1 Tell the Truth: Confession in the Later Middle Ages 15
I.2.2 Wycliffe and the Lollards 19
I.2.2.1 Two Swords 20
I.2.3 Arundel’s Constitutions 30
I.3 Setting Down the Track: The Plan for this Study 31
Chapter 1 – The Search for the Holy: Malory and Fifteenth-Century
Christianity 34
1.1 Unity and the Structure of the Text: Caxton and
Vinaver 36
1.2 Fifteenth-century English Lay Chivalric Christian
Piety 39
1.2.1 Chivalric Piety 42
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1.3 The Spiritual Trajectory of Le Morte Darthur 48
1.3.1 Sowing the Seed: “Uther Pendragon and Merlin” 49
1.3.1.1 Merlin Can Perceive God’s Will 50
1.3.1.2 The Sword in the Stone as a Miracle 53
1.3.2 Forshadowing the Grail: “Balyn le Sauvage” 53
1.3.3 The End of the Beginning: “King Arthur and the
Emperor Lucius” 58
1.3.4 The Spiritual Heart of Le Morte Darthur: “The
Sankgreal” 65
1.3.5 The Beginning of the End: “The Morte Arthur” 71
Chapter 2 – How to Bake a Pie(ty): Galahad And Lancelot 79 2.1 The World is Not Enough: Lancelot and Earthly
Chivalry 80
2.2 It’s a Matter of Priorities: Galahad and the Place of
Holiness 86
2.3 His Father’s Son: Galahad’s Identity 94
2.4 Holy Continuity!: The Religious Emphasis of the
Post-Grail Sections 105
2.5 Holiness Kills 111
2.6 The Healing of Urry and Lancelot’s Self-Knowledge 118 2.7 Why Lancelot and Guinevere Can Never Be Together 122
Chapter 3 – I Said I Was Sorry: Penance in Malory 127 3.1 The Road Not Taken: Penance and the Two Morte
Arthures 128
3.2 Guinevere: Subjectivity Through Penance 136
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3.3 Lancelot: If At First You Can’t Confess, Try Try
Again 144
3.4 Regret, Contrition, Penance, and King Arthur 153
3.5 The Archbishop, Minor Characters, and National
Penance 159
3.6 Sorry, Not Sorry: Sir Gawain and the Refusal of
Penance 163
Chapter 4 – Don’t I Know You From Somewhere: Malory’s Unused
Sources for the Grail Quest 171
4.1 Choice and La Queste del Saint Graal 173
4.1.1 Accessing the Grail: Sir Lancelot 177
4.1.2 Personal History and the Desire for Faith: Sir Percival 182
4.1.3 Difficult Choices: Sir Bors 185
4.1.4 Quest for the Meaning of the Grail 188
4.2 Hardying’s Chronicle: Literally one of Malory’s
Sources 189
4.2.1 Practically Perfect in Every Way: Hardying’s Arthur 190
4.2.2 An English Saint: Hardyng’s Galaad 192
4.3 Secularism and the French Prose Tristan 196
4.3.1 Bifocals: The Dual Focus of the French Prose Tristan 198
4.3.2 Tristan Versus Lancelot 200
4.4 Conflicting Purposes: The Place of Religion in
Perlesvaus 202
4.4.1 The Chapel Perilous and Lancelot’s Spiritual
Development 205
4.4.2 The Desire for Greatness: Arthur in Perlesvaus 208
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4.4.3 Mercy, Violence, and a Crusading Mindset 213
Chapter 5 – Arturus ex Nihilo: The Sourceless Sections of Le Morte
Darthur 216
5.1 The Hidden Religion of “Sir Gareth of Orkney” 217 5.1.1 “Sir Gareth of Orkney,” La Cote Male Tayle, and
Typological Reading 218
5.1.2 Pentecost, Miracles, and Murder: Sir Gareth and Sir
Galahad 219
5.1.2.1 Sir Gareth and Murder 223
5.1.2.2 Mercy and Conversation in “Sir Gareth of Orkney” 225 5.1.3 Good Knight, Everyone: Chivalry and Nobility in “Sir
Gareth of Orkney” 226
5.2 The Overt Religion of Sir Urry of Hungary 228
5.2.1 Holiness and Wholeness in the Healing of Sir Urry 229 5.2.2 “Secretly unto hymselff”: Lancelot’s Prayer 232 5.2.3 Seven Plus Three: The Seven Wounds of Sir Urry,
and the Trinity 235
5.3 The Developing Religion of the Colophons 238
5.3.1 The Colophons and the Division of the Text 239
5.3.2 The Simple Colophons 241
5.3.3 Ending and Beginning: The Colophon to “King Uther
and King Arthur” 244
5.3.4 A Shift in Tone: The Colophon to “Sir Gareth of
Orkney” 249
5.3.5 Earnest Prayer: The Colophons to “Sir Tristram de
Lyones” and “The Sankgreal” 251
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5.3.6 Bringing Two Together: The Colophon to “Sir
Launcelot and Queen Guenivere” 256
5.3.7 Explicit: The Colophon to “The Morte Arthure” 257
Conclusion – Taking Malory Seriously 269
C.1 Why Religion Matters to Le Morte Darthur 270
Works Cited: Medieval and Renaissance 275
Works Cited: Modern 280
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List of Abbreviations
I use the following abbreviations for in-text citations of editions of Malory:
C – Malory, Thomas. Caxton’s Malory: Le Morte Darthur. Ed. James W. Spisak and William Matthews. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983.
F – Malory, Thomas. Le Morte Darthur. Ed. P.J.C. Field. Cambridge: Brewer, 2013.
V – Malory, Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Eds. Eug ne Vinaver, and P J. C. Field. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
I also use the following abbreviations for in-text citations:
aMA – Alliterative Morte Arthure as found in Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition. Ed.
Mary Hamel. Garland Medieval Texts, 9. Garland, 1984.
sMA – Stanzaic Morte Arthur as found in Le Morte Arthur: A Critical Edition. Ed. P. F.
Hissiger. Mouton, 1974.
xii List of Figures
Figure 2.1 London, British Library, MS Add. 59678, fol. 349r. 126
xiii List of Tables
Table 5.1 Colophons in Caxton and Winchester 261
Table 5.2 Colophons of Le Morte Darthur by Type 266
1 Introduction
Malory and Religion in Context
al is wryton for our doctryne.
-Caxton’s preface to Le Morte Darthur
Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar' s; and to God, the things that are God' s.
-Matthew 22:211
When religious and political duties conflict, what must the faithful and loyal citizen do? Although Le Morte Darthur struggles and vacillates on the subject, Sir Thomas Malory ultimately sees the religious or spiritual duties of piety as incompatible with the social or political requirements of either subjects or rulers. Malory concludes that it is impossible to be both a good secular king or knight and a faithful subject of God.
Critical Perspectives on Le Morte Darthur
From the perspective of literary history, Le Morte Darthur has become the central text of Arthurian literature. One of very few medieval texts still widely read by non- specialists, it is a stated or unstated major source for virtually all Arthurian literature written in English since, and virtually all interpretations of Arthurian literature written before it are now mediated through it. So, for example, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King is an adaptation of Le Morte Darthur. The Lerner and Lowe musical Camelot and its film version are both adapted from T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, itself an
1 All biblical quotations from the Douay-Rheims translation.
2
adaptation of Le Morte Darthur. Even Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, which in its plot bears little similarity to Le Morte Darthur, is structured like Le Morte Darthur in episodes attached to the adventures of particular knights; indeed, it conspicuously avoids any plot overlap with Le Morte Darthur. Le Morte Darthur’s influence on The Faerie Queene is clear in its absence.
Le Morte Darthur was written—or at least completed—while its author was by his own account “a knyght presoner” (F 144.3; V 1: 180.22),
2and is part translation of
French sources like the La Queste del Saint Graal (circa 1230), part abridgement of English sources like the alliterative Morte Arthur (circa 1400), part original. It represents Malory’s attempt to collect the various strands of Arthurian narrative with which he was familiar, in English and in French, in poetry and in prose, in chronicle and in romance. So in Le Morte Darthur we find sections like “King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” a politically triumphalist section adapted primarily from a fourteenth-century English alliterative poem, and “Sir Tristram de Lyones,” which is adapted and translated primarily from a thirteenth-century French prose romance, not to mention “Sir Gareth of Orkney”
which has no known source. These sources are quite different in character and intention, and those differences find their way into Le Morte Darthur. An abiding question, then, is
2 Eugene Vinaver's The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (V) has been the standard academic edition of Malory since its publication. I have no doubt that Peter Field's excellent new edition of Le Morte Darthur (F) will be the standard academic edition in the future, and I use it as my primary source for Malory, but I provide references to where the same passages is found in V. Where there is a
disagreement between the editions, I have followed Field, and the V citation is provided as a reference.
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how successful Malory was at synthesizing his various sources into a coherent whole—or indeed whether there is in Le Morte Darthur any attempt at such a synthesis of sources at all.
There are any number of ways to theorize the relationship between texts. The most distinctively medieval way is the quadrifaria. Quadrifaria refers to the four modes of medieval allegory, used especially in biblical exegesis of the Hebrew scriptures: 1) literal or historical, 2) typological, 3) tropological, and 4) anagogical. The literal meaning of a text is mostly self-evident in this system. The typological is the degree to which a text alludes to or allegorically represents a biblical text. In the context of biblical exegesis typological reading is especially used when passages from the Hebrew scriptures
represent or prefigure events in the life of Christ. The tropological meaning of a text is the text’s moral allegory, and the anagogical is the text’s allegorical representation of
mystical spirituality. In the context of dialogism the typological sense is the most clearly relevant. In a typological reading the various texts exist alongside each other, and each informs the others. So, for example, Noah’s ark, Moses’ basket, and Jesus’ manger are all figures of each other, so that the significance of each image is deeper and clearer in the light of the others. So, using the quadrifaria as a lens for textual analysis necessitates both reading the text on its own grounds and at the same time reading it in the light of related texts.
The quadrifaria is a medieval approach to textual interaction. Twentieth- and
twenty-first-century theoretical approaches to textual interaction include for example
Harold Bloom’s Freudian-based ideas of influence, wherein new poets are driven to both
4
imitate and metaphorically to kill their predecessors
3; T. S. Eliot’s idea of a tradition within which authors write;
4Gerard Genette’s metaphor of the 1981palimpsest, the never- fully-erased residue of older texts that remain in the new;
5Linda Hutcheon’s biological metaphor of adaptation;
6and Hans Robert Jauss’s ideas of the reception being mediated by the cultural milieu of the reader,
7to take only a few examples. While each of these theoretical approaches has its merit, and each illuminates certain perspectives the others overlook, two of the most compelling and comprehensive theories are related: Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of dialogism,
8and Julia Kristeva’s intertextuality.
9Both of these
theoretical approaches offer a way of describing how a text like Le Morte Darthur may interact with other texts without being bound to demonstrating a direct line of influence which may not be there. They also both also provide a way of talking and thinking about the interaction between the sections of Le Morte Darthur that neither necessitates an absolute uniformity of vision nor implies complete disjuncture. Kristeva is Bakhtin’s direct intellectual descendant, producing the first translation of Bakhtin into French, and my engagement with dialogism also goes a long way to accounting for intertextuality.
3 See Bloom (1973).
4 See Eliot (1921; 1967).
5 See Genette (1997).
6 See Hutcheon (2006).
7 See Jauss (1982).
8 See Baktin (1981).
9 In her later writing Kristeva substitutes transposition for intertextuality, because intertextuality “has often been understood in the banal sense of ‘study of sources’” (Kristeva [1984] 60).
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For Bakhtin literature is fundamentally and crucially social and communicative, which means that it always anticipates a response. In a monological text—Bakhtin’s example is the epic—there is only one voice speaking and that voice asserts its authority to attempt to control the ideological perspective and its response. In a dialogical text the author shares space with others. In the narrowest sense this means that an author like Dostoyevsky (to use the same case as Bakhtin does) allows his characters to have ideas of their own and to articulate them explicitly as well as implicitly. The author does not share an ideological perspective with the characters, but the ideological perspective of the characters is allowed to assert itself on equal footing with that of the author. In a dialogical novel no world view unifies or is superior to, or has more authority than the others.
Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism is both broader and narrower than is
intertextuality. While Kristeva, in her use of the term intertextuality, is defining “text”
very broadly—anything content-bearing can be a “text,” including images, faces, etc.—
intertextuality still centres on texts. Bakhtin is not focusing on texts; he is focusing on language. Bakhtin’s dialogism is deeply tied to intent, while Kristeva moves away from criticism of authorial intention. For Bakhtin what makes language inherently dialogical is that when we use language we fill someone else’s words with our own intention.
Intention, then, can never be dismissed or ignored in a Bakhtinian framework. Without
authorial intention there is no dialogism. But on the other hand, for Bakhtin, intention is
far from the only thing that determines meaning. Dialogism means that other factors and
other intentions also come into play. And for Bakhtin the best, most interesting, most
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dialogical pieces of literature are those in which the author intentionally allows space for other intentions and for other readings.
Bakhtin’s emphasis is philosophical, linguistic, and sociological in his discussion of dialogism. In her discussion of intertextuality Kristeva adds a psychological
component to Bakhtin’s ideas. This is important for an understanding of what Kristeva brings to, and attempts to remove from, Bakhtin’s dialogism. For Bakhtin, the multiplicity of meanings exists in language and in society. For Kristeva, the focus shifts toward the mind of the reader. In that sense, while intention is crucial for Bakhtin it is largely irrelevant for Kristeva. At the same time, Kristeva’s intertextuality externalizes and objectifies subjectivity by focusing on a text. The reader responds ambivalently to a text because the ambivalence is present in the text itself. Catherine Batt argues that Malory is interested in creating an intertextual relationship between the various literary traditions he is drawing on.
10Both Hodges and Batt contend that Malory has no real investment in cohesion, and an intertextual or dialogical reading of Le Morte Darthur would suggest not only that the text coheres despite its inconsistencies, but also that its divisions are even more profound than is usually acknowledged. While I would argue for more cohesion than Hodges and Batt see in Le Morte Darthur, I agree with them that dialogism and intertextuality both help us to approach and interpret the text.
10 See Batt (2002), xvii-xix.
7 A Tale of Two Editors: Caxton and Vinaver
The idea of Le Morte Darthur as a coherent whole arguably originates with Malory’s first editor William Caxton, who also read and edited Le Morte Darthur as a spiritually-oriented book. In the prologue to his edition, which was the source text for all editions and discussions of Malory until the early twentieth century, Caxton writes that in Le Morte Darthur readers shall find:
ioyous and playsaunt hystoryes and noble and renomed actes of humanyte, gentylness, and chyualryes. For herein may be seen noble chyualrye, curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, loue, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue, and synne. (Caxton [1485; 1983] 3)
He advises readers to “Doo after the good and leue the euyl ... [because] al is wryton for our doctryne” (Caxton [1485; 1983] 3). Caxton does not present Le Morte Darthur as an uninterrupted parade of virtue; it would be a dull text if it were. He prepares readers to encounter cowardice, murder, hate, and sin as well as many virtues. But Caxton
contextualizes the entire narrative within a moral landscape. Caxton’s Le Morte Darthur is essentially didactic. The good is a positive example to readers, and the evil is a negative one. Caxton applies Romans 15:4 “For what things soever were written, were written for our learning” to Malory, simultaneously sanctifying literature and also grounding
Scripture in a literary context. From an intertextual perspective we can say that Caxton’s
introduction is an intertext that both defines and is defined by Malory’s text. Caxton’s
introduction also makes it clear that Le Morte Darthur has an intertextual relationship
with an entire tradition of moralistic texts up to the fifteenth century.
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Despite Caxton’s framing, there is no intrinsic reason why questions of moral right and wrong should be religious questions at all. Certainly Eugène Vinaver, editor of the standard academic edition of Malory and foremost Malory scholar for most of the twentieth century, concludes that Malory's chivalry was an ethical system but not a religious one.
11But Caxton’s preface takes it for granted that morality is fundamentally Christian, and presents the text that follows as both moral and moralistic. So Caxton’s purpose is that Le Morte Darthur educates English readers in how to be chivalrous, gentle, friendly, and good. And this moral purpose is also doctrinal. Caxton wants the book to help lead its readers into heaven:
for to beware that we falle not to vyce ne synne, but t’exersyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame and renomme in thys lyf, and after thys shorte and transytorye lyf to come unto everlastyng blysse in heven; the whyche He graunte us that reygneth in heven, the Blessyd Trynyte. Amen.
(Caxton [1485; 1983] 3)
In his use of “we” in this passage quoted above, Caxton locates himself as one of those who is being taught by the text, not as the teacher. The text warns him also not to fall into vice. Caxton begs the question of Malory’s moral and doctrinal purpose. He presents Malory as having the same didactic, moral, and doctrinal purpose that Caxton himself has: of educating readers in virtue, thereby ensuring their place in heaven. By positioning
11 See the introduction to The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, in which Vinaver makes this argument repeatedly (Vinaver [1990] pg. xxvii-xxviii, xxxii).
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himself as a naive reader, Caxton credits his interpretation as unequivocal authorial intention.
Vinaver already had a new Caxton-based edition of Le Morte Darthur underway, commissioned by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, when Walter Oakeshott
discovered and identified the Winchester manuscript in Winchester library in 1934.
12Oakeshott ceded the privilege of editing an edition based on this newfound source to Vinaver, who had to begin his work anew. One of Vinaver’s explicit goals in his new edition based on the evidence of the Winchester manuscript was to present Malory without Caxton—or at least to counteract some of Caxton’s editorial influence. The prospect had never before been possible. So in Vinaver’s account the eight separate tales of Malory “fell into Caxton’s hands” and he united them “as a matter of practical
expediency,” “editorial economy,” and “by force of circumstance” (Vinaver xxxviii).
Vinaver concludes that “It was Caxton’s idea, not Malory’s, to publish these works under one general title” (Vinaver xxxix), a title that “was inappropriate as a general
description[, as] Caxton knew full well” (Vinaver xxxix). The presentation of Malory’s volumes as a single book is “subterfuge” (Vinaver xl) and the editors who have used the title Le Morte Darthur are those who “have allowed themselves to be misled” (Vinaver xl). The result is a text that loses “diversity and richness of tone, expressive of the author’s real design” (Vinaver xli). Vinaver’s language here makes it clear that he is critical of Caxton’s editorial vision, to say the least.
12 For Vinaver’s account of the finding of the manuscript and his reaction to it, see Vinaver Commentary ([1990] vii-viii). For Oakeshott’s account see Oakeshott (1963).
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Vinaver seeks to correct Caxton’s misrepresentation of Malory, and understands Malory to be interested primarily in chivalry as a secular, martial ideal. When Malory addresses religious themes most directly in the Grail Quest, Vinaver argues that the religious concerns belong to Malory’s source, and that Malory himself secularizes the tale because he is indifferent to religion. In his commentary in The Works, Vinaver observes that although “Malory has become associated in our minds with such qualities as
‘humanity’ and ‘gentleness’” (Vinaver xxvii), the association is misguided—Vinaver refers to it as a “confusion” (Vinaver xxvii)—which has led to misinterpretation of Malory and of his themes. Readers who come to the text with a preformed expectation of finding gentleness and humanity find what they are looking for and fail to read in Malory what is really there: that is, an interest in the practical politics of knighthood and warfare.
For Vinaver the assumption of unity in the text and the assumption of piety in the text are linked, and he denies both. In the Grail section Vinaver perceives Malory as downplaying the religious in favour of worldly glory. Vinaver judges Malory’s Lancelot to be “far less conscious of his ultimate failure to achieve the quest than of his relative success in it” (Vinaver 1537). In contrast to his source, which “was a treatise on grace, with hardly a page or a line not intended for doctrinal exposition” (Vinaver 1539), Malory seems to Vinaver to be indifferent to grace and to doctrine in general. The contrast with Malory’s source is striking to Vinaver, and in his view reveals Malory’s real interests.
Recent Critics on Malory’s Religion
Critical debates over Malory’s religion are still very much alive. Among more
recent scholars, K. S. Whetter has argued, in the tradition of Vinaver, that Malory’s action
11
upon his source is to secularize it. He claims that “Malory’s juxtaposition of Christian and secular values continually valorizes rather than condemns earthly chivalry” (Whetter [2013], 159). Fiona Tolhurst (2013), Sandra Ihle (1983), and Jill Mann (1996), all argue, to a greater or lesser degree, that Malory’s attitude toward religion was ambivalent. Most argue that in Le Morte Darthur Malory is trying to find some middle ground between the value he places on earthly chivalry and some kind of recognition of holiness. Tolhurst calls this “secularized salvation [which] reflects both his strong interest in earthly life and his concern that knights of the world achieve salvation” (Tolhurst [2013] 132). Malory is by no means indifferent to salvation, but he finds it within a secular context. Ihle similarly argues in her book Malory’s Grail Quest that Malory “locates religious standards within the requirements of chivalry, so that adherence to the chivalric code … becomes
synonymous with true Christianity” (Ihle [1983] 123). In her contribution to A
Companion to Malory, Mann emphasizes how the holiness of the Grail quest comes at the expense of the wholeness of the community.
Taking the position that Malory is straightforwardly religious in his orientation,
Megan Arkenberg (2014) argues in her article “A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood,” that
Malory is indeed making a theological point in “The Sankgreal,” connecting piety to
barrenness by way of Galahad’s lack of sexuality. In the commentary to his new edition
of Malory (2013), Field repudiates Vinaver’s claims about Malory’s secularism. Vinaver
makes much of the phrase ‘erthly worship,’ which is found in Malory but not in the
source manuscript of the Queste that Vinaver was familiar with. But Field shows that an
equivalent French phrase is actually in some manuscripts, and was therefore likely what
Malory found in his source (Field 2.549). Critics like Dhira Mahoney and Alfred Kraemer
12
who most emphatically argue that Malory’s religious dimensions are significant have tended to focus on the Grail Quest—implicitly accepting Vinaver’s argument for the compartmentalization of the sections of Le Morte Darthur.
13Religion matters to Malory in the Grail Quest, but not elsewhere. Kenneth Hodges (2005) argues that the religion of Le Morte Darthur is contained to the Sankgreal, and his interest is more focused on the political consequences of that religion.
14There has never been a book-length study of the religious themes of Le Morte Darthur as a unified whole, but there have been many studies focusing on religious themes of specific passages of Malory—especially the Grail quest and the healing of Sir Urry. Recent examples include Kraemer’s book, which focuses exclusively on the Grail quest. Armstrong has recently argued that in the Grail episode Malory “retains the
spiritual focus and orientation of his source” (Armstrong [2013] 112). While the religious themes are not her main focus, Batt (2002) argues that Malory’s spiritual perspective is less explicit but no less sincere than those of his sources in the Grail quest. Blanton (2010) has argued for the sincerity of Guinevere’s conversion at the end of her life. Clark (2014) has emphasized the prayerful content of some of Malory’s colophons. Holbrook (2013) analyses the Trinitarian theology of Lancelot’s prayer in the healing of Urry, and
13 Mahoney’s focus for “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory's Transformation of La Queste Del Saint Graal” is, as is evident by the title, entirely on the Grail quest. Likewise Kraemer’s Malory's Grail Seekers and Fifteenth-century English Hagiography, which treats the Grail quest as stand-alone text.
14 Hodges’s central argument in Forging Chivalric Communities (2015) is that Malory presents
conflicting versions of chivalry without attempting to reconcile them. A sacred chivalry is, by Hodges’s account, only one of several versions of chivalry on offer in the text.
13
Olsen (2013) argues for the sincerity of Lancelot’s penance. All of these scholars have recently weighed in on the debate for Malory’s religious emphasis, but all have focused their attention on isolated passages of Le Morte Darthur.
The other way that Malory’s religious themes have been often explored has been in collections of essays like the valuable volume edited by D. Thomas Hanks Jr. and Janet Jesmok, Malory and Christianity (2013), which by design features essays making both complementary and contradictory arguments. For example, Hanks’s own offering to the collection argues that Malory’s language suggests a sincere faith. Hanks rests much of his argument upon Malory’s colophons, and my section on the colophons in chapter 5 is in many respects a development from Hanks. In contrast to Hanks, and also in Malory and Christianity, K. S. Whetter’s essay takes the opposite position and argues that Le Morte Darthur’s perspective is secular at its core. Karen Cherewatuk’s and Janet Jesmok’s essays both focus on religious rituals in Malory, but Cherewatuk draws on the evidence of funeral rituals to argue for an underlying religious worldview, while Jesmok uses the religious rituals in the final book of Le Morte Darthur as evidence that “Malory’s religion is usually grounded in this life, not the next” (Jesmok [2013] 92). In this thesis, I
undertake to reexamine Malory’s religious themes throughout Le Morte Darthur, and I
reach the conclusion that in Le Morte Darthur religious devotion and political loyalty are
incompatible.
14
Background Check: The Religious Context of Le Morte Darthur
The religious perspective of Le Morte Darthur does not arise in a vacuum, but is part of a conception of secular piety that develops through the later Middle Ages. Malory is writing in the first or second generations after a profound sea change in the literary- religious climate in England. Following centuries of popular lay vernacular theological writing, instigated by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, the writings of John Wycliffe and the increasingly radical and heretical Lollard movement led to a reactionary assertion of control by clerical leaders, most fully realized in the 1409 Constitutions of Arundel.
Nicholas Watson (1995) argues persuasively that the Constitutions created a situation in which “all but the most pragmatic religious writing would come to be seen, by the early fifteenth century, as dangerous: a perception that led inexorably to a by and large successful attempt to inhibit the further composition of most kinds of vernacular theology” (Watson 825). Arundel’s Constitutions “forbid the study not simply of Wycliffe’s books but of all recent texts that have not been approved unanimously by a panel of twelve theologians” (Watson 827). In other words, Arundel’s Constitutions produce a literary rupture-point. Pre-Wycliffe vernacular theology was acceptable in a way that post-Wycliffe vernacular theology was not, regardless of its orthodoxy. We should therefore not be surprised if we must read between the lines to find religious content in a fifteenth-century text.
1515 Hicks ([1928] 40) and Lustig ([2014] 70) both consider Malory to have Lollard sympathies.
15
Tell the Truth: Confession in the Later Middle Ages
While Arundel’s Constitutions deny theological agency to lay Christians, the earlier church institution of confession asserted it. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 made yearly confession mandatory for all Christians, which created a popular need for guidance in confessional practice. This need was partially met—and partially expressed—
in vernacular literature of the Middle Ages. For example, the Wife of Bath’s prologue is arguably a secular confession,
16and through it Chaucer demonstrates both how the confessional subject existed in the fourteenth century, but more importantly that “by the fourteenth century, the discourse of confession has become the privileged language of the subject” (Root 92).
Jerry Root sees Peter Abelard’s articulation of the doctrine of confession as both emblematic and formative of the later doctrine of confession and the associated emphasis on self-knowledge and intention that confession would later require.
17Abelard draws a sharp distinction between “animi uicium” and “peccatum” (Abelard [1971] 4), the first being the condition or inclination toward the second which is its execution. In his own words, “Vitium … est quo ad peccandum proni efficimur” (“Vice … is that by which we are made prone to sinning” Abelard [1971] 4). The importance of this assertion here is
16 See Root (1997) 103-118. Root argues at length that the Wife of Bath uses the discourse of confession to authorize her to speak about her own experience in a secular context.
17 Abelard’s Ethics is subtitled Scito te ipsum, or “know yourself” a clear echo of the Delphic motto γνῶθι σεαυτόν.
16
that sin is an act of will, not an inner weakness. It is, in Abelard’s terms, consent to the mental vice.
The later confessional manuals, such as the fourteenth-century Book of Vices and Virtues (which is a translation of the thirteenth-century Somme le Roi), reproduce the emphasis Abelard had placed on intention by organizing sin in terms of the seven deadly sins, which are the source of all other sins in that they are the mental or internal states from which action—even action of the mind—comes. So we have here a formulation of the self—of the subject—in which the interior condition of strength or weakness, of virtue or vice, is the precondition within which the will and the reason act either to consent to vice and therefore to sin or else to resist vice and therefore to remain sinless. The subject then must confess not only the deeds but the nature and degree of consent to vice which actions entailed. This demands self-knowledge of a particular kind. One must have some kind of sense of the virtuousness or viciousness of one’s nature, and not all natures are the same. All human beings are inclined toward sin, but not all are inclined equally toward the same sins in the same degrees; Abelard draws an analogy with a lame man whose lameness exists even when he is not limping. The person’s inherent nature inclines him or her toward certain sins, even when he or she is not sinning.
The late medieval discourse of confession is an exercise of self-examination and self-presentation for the purpose of achieving salvation. Confession after 1215 was
understood to be a sacrament. It is simultaneously the means by which the sinner achieves
salvation and the means by which God enacts that salvation. The discipline of confession
became ubiquitous—a universally familiar and common experience of self-
17
representation. That is why Chaucer, writing in the fourteenth century, can present the Wife of Bath’s prologue in confessional terms. The Wife of Bath presents an account of herself that expresses intention in a way that makes sense after Abelard, and that in its approach and structure recalls what we should expect of confession. Although she is speaking to a secular audience and in a secular context, and although she presents much of her language in terms of self-defence and explanation rather than contrition, she still structures her self-representation after the model of manuals of confession, particularly on the topic of lust. Root stresses that the Wife of Bath’s assertion of the authority of her own experience, while still subversive, is less unexpected than modern readers of Chaucer might assume (Root 103-104). Confession as a practice of self-representation depends upon the ability to speak authoritatively about one’s own intention and actions, based on one’s own experience. The sacrament of confession controls the gloss of that experience in particular ways as indicated in the confessional manuals; not all interpretations are acceptable. Nevertheless, confession necessarily also gives real authority of speech and of interpretation to the confessing subject.
Margery Kempe is an example of just such a confessing subject. The Book of Margery Kempe begins by defining itself as a comfort “for synful wrecchys, wherin þei may have gret solas and comfort to hem and undyrstondyn þe hy and unspecabyl mercy of ower sovereyn Savyowr Cryst Jhesu, whos name be worschepd and magnyfyed
wyþowten ende” (Kempe 1). Kempe is a middle-class laywoman. The authority she takes
upon herself (to speak about herself, to interpret God’s actions and workings in her life, to
suggest the effect of her life and her own interpretation of it for wretches and sinners)
draws on two late-medieval conventions or traditions. The first is mysticism, and the
18
second is the tradition of confession. In late medieval England interpretation of God’s word was officially restricted to men, which left the interpretation of the body, experience and the senses increasingly up to women.
18This is why women dominate the mystical tradition. Yet the ability and authority women have to interpret feelings and experiences is an authority bred from the tradition of confession as a necessary sacrament. All women—and all men—were expected to have experience interpreting their actions and feelings to some degree. Confession is the impetus for both autobiography and for mysticism.
Appropriately, Margery Kempe begins her story with an attempt at a confession:
sche sent for hyr gostly fadyr, for sche had a þyng in conscyens whech sche had nevyr schewyd beforn þat tyme in alle hyr lyfe. … And, whan sche cam to þe poynt for to seyn þat þing whech sche had so long conselyd, hir confessowr was a lytyl to hastye and gan scharply to
undyrnemyn hir er þan sche had fully seyd hir entent, and so sche wold no mor seyn for nowt he mygth do. (Kempe 6-8)
Though Kempe’s attempt at confession is frustrated here, the narrative itself is her
successful account of herself, her sins, her intentions, and her redemption. In other words, it demonstrates that the language and ideology of confession continued to be a central discourse of representation—including, plainly, literary representation—of the subject in the fifteenth century. Kempe receives criticism and threats, and is accused of being a
18 See Watson (1995), Root (1997), and Jantzen (1994), each of whom make this point in more depth.
19
Lollard, but the discourse of confession gives her the license and space to speak both as a character within the story and as the author of the narrative itself.
Wycliffe and the Lollards
Kempe is not the only author of her period who was accused by her contemporaries of being a Lollard. Most of the major writers in England in the late Middle Ages have been suspected of Lollardy or Lollard sympathies by those hostile to Lollardy, or conversely, claimed by those sympathetic to it. The Lollard movement was critical of clergy, and therefore all literature critical of clergy in the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries can seem to have Lollard leanings. Chaucer's criticism of monastic orders in The Canterbury Tales strikes some readers as suspicious.
19Langland's Piers Plowman, for its hostility toward friars, has likewise seemed to some readers to be sympathetic to Lollard ideals.
20According to Anne Hudson, “Bale ascribed a work entitled Petrum Agricolam to Wyclif himself” (Hudson [1988] 398). Thomas Hoccleve scolds John Oldcastle for usurping the authority of the clergy by arguing theology as a layman: “Lete holy chirche medle of the doctryne/ Of Crystes lawes and of his byleeue, And lete all otheir folk thereto enclyne/ And of our feith noon argumentes meeue”
(Hoccleve 64.136-140). Despite this reproach, Hoccleve arguably does the exact same thing. When Hoccleve argues that “The disciples of Cryst had hardynessse/ For to
19 See, for example, Frances McCormack (2004), Craig T. Fehrman (2007), Alistair Minnis (2008), Andrew Cole (2006).
20 See, for example, Cole (2006), Johnson (1992), and most notably, John Bale (1548), who in Illvstrivm Maioris Britannicae Scriptorvm listed Petram Agricolam as actually having been written by Wycliffe.
20
appeare. They nat wolde hem hyde/For fere of deeth, but in his cause dyde” (Hoccleve 70.279-381), what is that if not an argument about faith? So while he has rarely been accused of Lollard sympathies it is easy to imagine Hoccleve running afoul of anti- Lollard laws, and easy to see how both his theology and his approach to the self have been influenced and shaped by Lollardy. Katherine C. Little, in her book Confession and Resistance, argues that the popularity and ubiquity of Lollardy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries specifically complicates the nature and meaning of confession. Little’s central thesis is that the Lollards “challenge orthodoxy not only in terms of doctrine … but also by reforming the language given to church members to understand and speak about themselves … set[ting] aside the traditional cultivation of interiority concentrated on the confessional and provid[ing] alternative models of Christian identity based on scripture” (Little 1). While the cultivation of confessional discourse and the ideas of Lollardy thrived concurrently, they represent opposing movements within the religious context of the late Middle Ages.
Two Swords
Wycliffite theology includes a reinterpretation of the Doctrine of the Two Swords.
21As articulated by Pope Gelasius I in the late fifth century, the doctrine states
21 King Arthur, of course, has two swords of his own: the first is the sword in the stone, which Arthur breaks in a battle against King Pellinore (F 42.4; V 1: 50.30), and the second is Excalibur, which Arthur receives from the Lady of the Lake (F 43-44; V 1: 53). The meaning of Arthur’s swords is a central conceit of Hodges’ Forging Chivalric Communities, especially the second chapter (Hodges [2005] 35- 61). Hodges argues that each of Arthur’s swords represents a kind of chivalry, with the first standing
21
that “Two there are ... by which this world is ruled: The consecrated authority of priests and the royal power” (Gelasius 179). The “two swords” of the doctrine refers to Luke 22:36-38:
Then said [Jesus] unto them, “But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat, and buy a sword. ... But they said: Lord, behold here are two swords. And he said to them, It is enough.
In the later Middle Ages and throughout the English Reformation the doctrine of Two Swords was used to interpret this passage as a prophetic commentary on the
administration of a Christian state.
Gelasius argues that God rules the world but ordains and administers his justice by the use of two swords: the secular sword of royal power and the sacred sword of priestly power. Gelasius writes to the Byzantine Emperor: “though first to the human race in dignity, you submit devoutly to those who are preeminent in God’s work, and inquire of them the causes of your salvation” (Gelasius 179). The two “swords” are not equal, either in scope or in power.
The inequality of the swords was rather more stridently asserted by Pope
Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302), in which he argues that both swords “are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the
for “might means right” (Hodges [2005] 41) and the second for “blood feud” (Hodges [2005] 43), and the sword that Arthur recovers after it has been stolen by Morgan representing “justice” (Hodges [2005]
48).
22
former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church” (Boniface VII).
Boniface presents a hierarchy in which God has granted authority directly to the Pope, who then has the power to grant (or withdraw) authority to kings. The temporal sword, in Boniface’s view, is subject to the church, and thus kings are subject to the authority of the Pope.
Boniface’s late-thirteenth-century claim to hold both swords was a source of ongoing theological interest, including that of the fourteenth-century theologian John Wycliffe. Stephen E. Lahey has made the case that Wycliffe’s theological perspective on the relationship of church and state, and on the rightful control of and use of the two swords, is grounded in Wycliffe’s ontological position. Lahey stresses that Wycliffe was a realist about universals, and that for Wycliffe “God’s absolute transcendence entails no real relation is possible between God and Creation. Only a relation following from some act of God in Creation can make the connection” (Lahey 68). This implies, among other things, that God’s lordship is both an effect of and is in some sense contingent upon God’s ongoing action and intervention in the world. Any claim to hold both swords is a claim to act on behalf of God, which in Wycliffe’s ontological scheme implies usurping God’s place. There is no mediator or intercessor between God’s lordship and any member of humanity. God’s action in the world is direct, because for Wycliffe,
Dominium Dei mensurat, ut prius et presuppositum, omnia alia
assignada: Si enim creatura habet dominium super quidquam, Deus prius
habet dominium super idem; ideo ad quodlibet creature dominium sequitur
dominium divinum, et not econtra.”
23
(God’s dominion is the measure of, as prior to and the presupposition of, all other dominion which is assigned: For if a creature has dominion over anything, God has dominion first over the same; so it is that any creaturely dominion follows divine dominion, and not vice versa. Wycliffe [1890] I,iii,16.18-22).
In political terms this leads Wycliffe to the conclusion that the King has been granted temporal authority by God and is ultimately answerable only to God; God’s ministers are not licensed to speak for God or take upon themselves authority that lawfully belongs to God. Their authority is a spiritual one that depends upon submission to both the temporal authority of the King and to the role within creation assigned by God. The Pope, in Wycliffe’s ontological scheme, should have the authority to pray and to give spiritual counsel and to interpret theology according to Scripture’s leadings.
True authority, from a Wycliffite perspective, comes only from God. Popes, priests, knights, and kings exercise dominion, but do so lawfully and justly only in so far as the exercise coincides with God’s true dominion. Kings have temporal lordship of a kind, but it is true lordship only when it acts according to the principles of divine lordship. Priests, likewise, have spiritual lordship which nevertheless depends upon submission to God in order to be valid. From Wycliffe’s perspective, when the church, by means of a priest, bishop, or pope, attempts to assert its authority over the king it
effectively relinquishes its spiritual authority by stepping outside the bounds of God’s
dominion. When the church attempts to be the state, it fails even to be the church. Faithful
kings can correct an unfaithful priesthood by outlawing heresy, and faithful priests can
correct an unfaithful state by prayer and exhortation. A faithful lay citizen is bound
24
primarily to be loyal to the dominion of God, which since it is unmediated can be
interpreted and acted upon by a faithful lay citizen. In theory, for Wycliffe, a lay citizen is not bound to follow the unjust, unlawful, false authority of either a state or a church that is not in a state of grace in submission to God. In practice, however, Wycliffe stresses that a state of grace is a mystery known only to God. No Christian can with confidence speak to the grace or lack of grace experienced by any other. Lacking the ability to accurately discern whether a king, pope, knight, or priest is in the state of grace which validates their authority and dominion, Wycliffe concludes that faithful Christians should submit to the dominion of those to whom authority has been granted. For Wycliffe, furthermore, the office of both spiritual and temporal Lords suffices for God to provide unmediated
blessing to the people regardless of the lack of grace experienced by the man fulfilling the office. A priest out of grace has no true authority or dominion, has no ownership of anything, and is condemned by God, but is nevertheless able to administer the true sacraments because God does not allow the sinfulness of the man to harm the people to whom the office ministers. Likewise, a king out of grace has no true authority or power or ownership of the land, his laws are invalid, he is a usurper and a tyrant as far as his
relationship to God is concerned. But the temporal power of the tyrant still protects a citizen as long as that citizen adheres to the tyrant’s laws which are established as a means of grace from God to the people in defiance of the king. In practice commoners are compelled to loyalty and obedience to kings and clergy whether their lords are in a state of grace or not.
Wycliffe’s ontologically-justified theological philosophy does not fully coincide
with Lollardy as it existed in the fifteenth century. Anne Hudson argues that in Lollardy
25
“is found a sequence unusual in medieval times, of a heresy that began as a product of academic speculation but that moved out of the academic world to become a popular movement” (Hudson [1988] 62). Hudson argues persuasively that Wycliffism and Lollardy are often functionally the same, but if any distinction can be made it is that Wycliffism is the academic speculation, and Lollardy is the popular movement. Late fourteenth-century accounts of them often depict the Lollards as revolutionaries without loyalty to either church or state—and this perspective seems partially justified by the association of Lollardy with the failed Oldcastle revolt of January 1414. The Lollards were certainly not loyal to the authority of the church, but as we have already seen, loyalty to church and to state were often divided. Denial of loyalty to one does not imply denial of loyalty to the other. In fact, as Helen Barr notes,
when one turns to what the Wycliffites actually wrote themselves
… rather than what was written about them, it is clear that Lollard texts are unanimous and univocal in their declaration of obedience to secular
authority. The king must be obeyed, even if he be a tyrant, and members of civic society must be ordered according to the normative tripartite division into lords, clergy and labourers. (Barr 197)
The tripartite division of medieval society is related to the Doctrine of the Two Swords.
Two of the three estates—the lords and the clergy—wield the swords of authority over
the third: the labourers. Lollard thinking maintained this three-part division, but did not
hold all the parts in equal moral esteem. In contrast to a stream of medieval thought that
considered labourers to be marginal and degenerate members of society, Lollard ideology
26
lionized peasants, reasoning that their poverty made them more faithful apostles of Christ than did the wealth of the other two estates—especially the clergy.
Two early fifteenth-century Lollard texts set out the Lollard worldview: “Sixteen Points on which the Bishops accuse Lollards,” and “Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.”
Of the twelve conclusions in the second text several are directly relevant here. The ninth conclusion, that “þe articlis of confessiun þat is sayd necessari to saluaciun of man”
depend upon a “feynid power of absoliciun” (“Conclusions” 27.114-116), speaks directly to the practices and principles of confession. We see here that the objection of the
Lollards is not so much to the discourse of confession in itself as to the mechanisms of absolution. In fact, the grounds upon which confession is to be considered unnecessary is the ease of confessional language and the people’s mastery of it. In keeping with
Wycliffe’s ontological perspective, confession need not, for the Lollards, be mediated by a priest. All Christians are able to—and should—make their confession directly to God.
The primary objections in the “Twelve Conclusions” to the discipline of confession are that it “enhaunsith prestis pride” (“Conclusions” 27.116), and that it “ȝeuith [priests]
opertunite of priui calling other þan we wele now say” (“Conclusions” 27.116-117). Later
the text addresses commercialization of the church and the hypocrisy wherein the church
will “selle þe blisse of heuene” (“Conclusions” 27.124-125), but the first objection to the
practice of oral confession is that it enhances the priest’s pride and entices the priest to
sin. This objection to oral confession in practice resonates well with the account of
confession described by Margery Kempe above, wherein the priest blocks Margery’s
legitimate and full contrition and absolution instead of facilitating it.
27
The sixth conclusion, which is also prefaced by a concern about “michil pride”
(“Conclusions” 26.62) is that “a kyng and a bisschop al in o persone, a prelat and a iustise in temperel cause, a curat and an officer in wordly seruise, makin euery reme out of god reule” (“Conclusions” 26.62-64). This conclusion is the direct opposite of Pope
Boniface’s assertion that the body of Christ must have one head—himself—not two heads
“like a monster” (Boniface). While Boniface argues that the body of Christ requires a single head for the sake of unity and cohesion, Wycliffe countered that the head of the body of Christ is neither the pope nor the king. The head of the body of Christ is Christ.
Since Christ’s dominion is unmediated the theological result is that every part of the body of Christ is under the direct authority of Christ himself. The two swords are wielded by hands, not by a head, and, to continue Boniface’s metaphor, a body with two hands is not monstrous, but is rather the norm. The Lollards argue that the separation of temporality and spirituality is a deliberate and important part of the divine ordering of the world:
“temperelte and spirituelte ben to partys of holi chirche, and þerfore he þat hath takin him to þe ton schulde nout medlin him with þe toþer, quia nemo potest duobus dominis seruire” (26.65-67).
The first of the “Twelve Conclusions” is that “qwan þe chirche of Yngelond
began to dote in temperalte aftir her stepmodir þe grete chirche of Rome, and chirchis
were slayne be apropriacion to diuerse placys, feyth, hope and charite begunne for to fle
out of oure chirche” (“Conclusions” 24.7-10). The “qwan” shows that the English church
was not always steeped in temporality, but that it is a latter-day development. It is a
symptom of the church’s decline. This theological nostalgia—an appeal to the bygone
days of true faithfulness—is a common sentiment in reformers. It repositions the radicals
28
as conservative; they are the ones who are seeking to conserve and preserve the church as it once was: to protect it from the decay and corruption of new practices. Furthermore, the idea of hope, faith, and charity flying out of the church depends upon a Wycliffite idea of the distinction between the visible and the invisible church. For Wycliffe, the visible and temporal institution of the church is not the Body of Christ. According to a Wycliffite ontological perspective the unfaithful church is not the church at all.
The text “Sixteen Points on which the Bishops accuse Lollards” likewise makes a number of doctrinal assertions, this time in response to accusations made against the Lollards. The fourth accusation is: “þat þer is no pope, neþer was any siþ þe tyme of seint Peter þe pope” (“Sixteen Points” 19.10-11). The Lollard response to this accusation is:
we beleuen þat oure lord Iesu Crist was and is cheffe bischoppe of his chirche, as seint Peter seiþ, and schal be vnto þe dai of dome. And we supposen þat þer han ben may hooli faderris, popis, siþen seint Petrus tyme, þouȝ þis name ‘pope’ be not seid in Goddis lawe, as seint Clement, sent Clete and oþer many moo. And so we graunten þat þe pope of Rome shulde next folowe Crist and seint Peter in maner of lyuynge, and, if he do so, he is worþily pope, and, if he contrarie hem moost of al oþer, he is most anticrist. (“Sixteen Points” 21.87-95)
We do not here see the practical restraint of Wycliffe (especially the early Wycliffe) who
argued that in practice it is impossible to discern the true grace-centred dominion of a
good and faithful pope from the false and empty posturing of a false pope, because God
gives the state of grace directly to the Christian and the knowledge of whether a Christian
exists in grace or not is God’s alone. Here, based on the same ontology of dominion, the
29
implication is that ordinary lay Christians—and certainly Lollards—are able to discern the worthiness of a pope. The assertion as stated in the context of the eighth accusation is that “if [popes] make any lawes contrarie to Cristis lawe, men ben as grettly boundon to aȝenstande þoo wicked lawes as þei ben bounded to keþe þer good lawes” (“Sixteen Points” 22). Since, as the Tractatus de regibus, a late fourteenth-century Lollard reworking of Wycliffe’s Latin De Officio Regis, makes clear, “þer is none powere but ordeyned of God, he þat aȝeynestondus powere, aȝeynestondus God, for he aȝeynestondus þo ordinaunce of God” (Tractatus 129), priests are compelled to be obedient to the
authority of temporal powers—kings, princes, knights. A pope who attempts to overcome or countervene the good and divinely granted dominion of a king makes a law “contrarie to Cristis lawe” (Tractatus 22), and demonstrates that he is not a pope—that is, not a successor of St. Peter and of Christ. The pope, according to this reasoning, is a priest, and the good and lawful duty of a priest is “to teche and preche þe puple, and not onli þat but also to preie and to mynyster þe sacramentis of God, and lyue welle” (“Sixteen Points”
22). In the Tractatus de regibus, the author points out that although “Mony syche wordis
spekis Goddus lawe of kyngus” (Tractatus 129), the Bible “spekis not of popis nouþer
gode ne yuel” (Tractatus 129). This in itself is enough for Lollard doctrine to prefer and
to privilege kings and their authority over popes. Kings have both the authority and the
responsibility to rule according to and to enforce temporal law, even over priests and
popes who are fully subject to that authority. The authority of kings according to Lollard
doctrine, then, includes authority over priests and popes, but it does not include moral
authority to “punysche here mennys synnu … by resone of iurisdicciouns, for worldely
and gostely ben algatys departud” (Tractatus 130). Priestly authority is founded on
30
spiritual grounds and does not exist if the priest is not faithful—and both submission to the king and earthly poverty are marks of faithfulness, since priests should follow the example of Christ fully or else they are not priests at all.
Arundel’s Constitutions
Archbishop Arundel responded to the Lollards in part through his 1409 Constitutions, which Anne Hudson argues were designed “to control three things:
Preachers, books, and the universities” (Hudson [1988] 82). Nicholas Watson argues persuasively that Arundel’s Constitutions should not be understood simply as Lollard persecution, but as “the linchpin of a broader attempt to limit religious discussion and writing in the vernacular” (Watson 824). Central to Watson’s argument is that there is a notable decrease in vernacular theology and in spiritually or theologically challenging literature in England in the fifteenth century. Watson and Hudson both argue that the relative secularism of fifteenth-century literature compared to fourteenth-century literature is an effect of Arundel’s Constitutions, which are themselves a response to Lollardy.
The legislation was not enforced in the radical way that Watson suggests it could have been. Hudson points out:
though the powers available to the bishops, through traditional
constraints as well as through the legislation enacted in the face of the
Wycliffite threats, were formidable, it is evident that they were exercised
only sporadically. Even if the record of investigation is now very
31
incomplete, it seems clear that many who were technically in default of Arundel’s Constitutions escaped without suspicion” (Hudson [1988] 445).
Yet Watson’s central argument is that the Constitutions need not have been strictly enforced to have a stifling effect upon thought and writing in the fifteenth century, and they need not have been the explicit motivational factor discouraging a writer from addressing theological topics in the vernacular. Rather, the Constitutions created an ideological association that contributed to a cultural shift. The censorship was mostly self-imposed, not through paranoid fear of persecution but through ideological manipulation. The Constitutions changed the demand, the means of production, the educational context, and the culture changed itself as a result.
Setting Down the Track: The Plan for this Study
The analysis below of the particularly fifteenth-century English flavour of Le Morte Darthur’s Christianity pays special attention to confession. Chapter one also shows how the religious and spiritual themes of Le Morte Darthur pervade the text, and are especially evident when Le Morte Darthur is read as a single unified text. Le Morte Darthur becomes more spiritually focused as proceeds, and this effect is cumulative. In
“King Uther and King Arthur” the religious aspects provide primarily a cultural setting, but by the end of Le Morte Darthur the religious values have become the text’s informing worldview.
2222 There is no universal consensus about whether Malory wrote the tales in the order in which they currently appear—Vinaver hypothesized that he did not, and that “The Tale of the Noble King Arthur
